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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25546378">i worshipped an eldritch whale god and all i got was a broken mind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeka/pseuds/Emeka'>Emeka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dishonored (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ambiguous Slash, High Chaos Corvo Attano, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Worship, corvo gets the rune crazies, post-first game</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 10:21:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,057</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25546378</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeka/pseuds/Emeka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>corvo discovers religion and is destructively horny about it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Corvo Attano/The Outsider (Dishonored)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>i worshipped an eldritch whale god and all i got was a broken mind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The city is always burning now, even when it rains. Corvo goes out sometimes on the balconies, just to watch. There’s been a progression to it he has marked day by day. The run-down districts first, fire-bombed to hell and barely making a dent in the rats. Then in desperation or retaliation, the affluent districts. Or whatever passed for affluent, toward the end of things.</p><p>A twinkling of ember dies out in one spot just to smolder in another. It’s the only spot of color left. Ash and smoke is so heavy on the winds the whole sky is a dull gray. He has been able to see neither a true sunrise or set for a while now. </p><p>Beauty is still here though. A form of it is here sprawled out before him, assisted by his own hand. He has seen it in waves of rats swallowing the streets, mere feet below him. And he has seen it in the fire, yes, infernos swallowing buildings, reflected in the water on piers and boats, and the smell of wood popping and  thick, oily burning meat. The blood he still spills where he can is just as red, just as vibrant, though it is an ever-dwindling sight.</p><p>The halls of Dunwall Tower are always quiet now. No other step echoes his. There’s a dreamlike recollection of how the possibility once made him feel. But he is not alone, really, and more and more not alone. Even with Dunwall in this state, he has been hunting, listening for a song he rarely hears outside his room now. He will need to hunt elsewhere soon, perhaps further east, or up north into the center of the continent. See how badly the chaos has spread through the rest of Gristol, catch a boat if necessary.</p><p>He should have moved already, but they are what keeps him here. </p><p>He has so many now he is loathe to leave them, even to search for more. And their beauty far exceeds the city’s decadent putrefaction.</p><p>It didn’t take long to make a shrine of his room. The process began when he simply realized he no longer had to worry about being caught with them. And it feels good to... flaunt them, the same way he could not resist baring the Mark on the back of his hand.</p><p>The others he has seen have been tucked away, secret, private, taboo, as though they were something to be ashamed of. Seeing his in comparison always swells pride inside him, though he knows the conceit is human hubris. The size of the offering makes no difference. A shrine is a shrine. Still. He often goes through the bonecharms and runes arranged on the altar and tied from the wall with a tender touch, like an animal making the finishing touches on its nest. He comes here when he is not hunting, or killing, or watching the city burn and rot. The pull to stay here <i>all</i> the time is strong. </p><p>They seem to sing louder when he leaves. If you aren’t here... if someone else comes... </p><p>It wouldn’t matter, he knows. The runes only work for one who is Marked. Well, they do have their uses for him as well. He would miss that.</p><p>When he touches the engraving in the bones, he feels an even stronger awe than the Mark on his own skin gives him. He feels power, old, old, old, old, and terrible. Kneeling at the shrine he smells the salt of the sea and a weight comes over his shoulders and back. Even when The Outsider does not come, his vision wavers and grows dark at the edges, blurring into the blue light from the oil lamps.</p><p>For an instant he is not in his room, and not even in the Void, though it is close sometimes. He is deep underwater. The song humming around him resonates through his own bones and in the meat of his brain.</p><p>It is like being <i>touched</i> by The Outsider; a brief nod of acknowledgement, even when he chooses not to converse.</p><p>It is fear of such a loss that keeps him still when he should be going on. But he will gather his bravery, and does, day by day as the world around him grows quiet.</p><p>Because the thing that scares him most of all is becoming <i>boring</i>.</p><p>The Outsider keeps no favorites.</p><p>He dreams every night of walking among rats that bite through the leather of his boots. Or Jessamine dying in his arms. Or another night of torture at Coldridge. But last night, for the first night in many nights, he dreamed of the Void.</p><p>Corvo dropped into a kneel as he is accustomed to at every shrine, knees giving (up) before he consciously gave the command to his body to do so.</p><p>He saw The Outsider’s boots before him, and heard his voice above his bent neck, lapping over his body. “I wonder, dear Corvo,” he began, in a tone of voice that has been new between them since that storm at Kingsparrow Island. Not quite warm. But not so indifferent as before. “Do you mean to see the city die down to the last man?”</p><p>“You don’t enjoy it?”</p><p>“I see everything. I can watch the Empire and you at the same time. All your possibilities are laid out before me.” Curiousity, as always, added inflection to his voice, a certain human-like rhythm of speech that was typically lacking. “I’m waiting to see which road you’ll choose.”</p><p>“Would it interest you to see the other lands fall?”</p><p>“Do you think you can?” The voice warmed even further, with something that is, for The Outsider, tangentially related to curiousity. Hunger. “I see a million and one ways where you die, and not even in the glory of combat. I see you falling to your knees as you do before on the side of some long dusty road and never rising again. I see you succumbing to disease in alleyways. I see you slipping on a patch of ice and breaking your neck on the flagstones. A million and one and more, my dear friend.”</p><p>“My odds of making it this far must have been as low.”</p><p>“Yes. That’s why I wonder. I’m excited to see how you’ll manage it. If you will. You always do fascinate me.”</p><p>He held his hand out to him, as though he meant him to take it and stand. Or maybe that's just romantic thinking. Probably he was only gesturing to him.</p><p>Corvo received it gently between his, like holding something too hot to come into full contact with, and was not surprised to find that it felt almost like holding nothing. The sensation of <i>something</i> pressed back into his skin, but not skin, cool or hot, soft or callused. If he could grab the Void itself it might feel like this. There and not-there.</p><p>"I've seen both sides of the extent of your potential, my friend. Your sheer capacity as a catalyst for change brings me satisfaction, whichever way you follow it."</p><p>He does not need to touch his god to know him. He knows the the tenets of worship, how to please him, and the rules of interaction between them. But he is not blind to the significance of it, or the fact that his forwardness is not rebuked. How likely is it that he’s the first to manage it? Not very; he tried, tries, to dispel the alluring thought of being <i>special</i> to The Outsider, his <i>favorite</i>. It isn’t wise. </p><p>He wishes he was.</p><p>Something inside his chest burned and squeezed. He remembered a lesser feeling like it... a long time ago.</p><p>One last favor. His lips pressed next, against the nails, like kissing a lady’s hand. Gentlemanly. No, this was not on such a low level. So common. The term of ‘supplicant’ was more fitting. His chest burned brighter than all of Dunwall ever had. The nail under his moving lips felt as not-there as the skin beneath his fingers. “I expect you to watch every step of of my next act.”</p><p>The hand turned, and Corvo allowed it to slip from his grasp, never a thought of holding it in place. It did not pull away entirely but on the turn, numbly cupped Corvo’s cheek. “I am always watching your every move, dear Corvo.”</p><p>*</p><p>Corvo woke in the underwater moonglow of his shrine-room, so achingly erect his entire pelvis ached. Still felt dark out. For at least five minutes he lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. It didn’t leave. An ember remained still in his chest. Always watching. He only thought about it when he was providing a show. He assumed The Outsider kept tabs of him other times, of course, but only when it was... important. Meetings he used to hold. Not in the act of bathing, or as he idly watched the world around him cleanse itself. Not during what was currently asking for his attention.</p><p>The idea of putting on another show was a presumptuous one. The Outsider must be so used to the foibles of human sexuality it would mean as little to him as the uninteresting masses who prayed for his gift. No matter how he tried he couldn’t think there would be anything in such an offering that wasn’t for his own sake, just to indulge in the awe of his cheek, that still burns when he thinks of it.</p><p>His hand slipped into his sleep pants before he could think better of it and his reasons. His admiration had always been innocent in nature. What this was, here, hard and thumping in his palm, was only the result of so <i>much</i> piety that his mind read it as erotic. He had read before the term <i>ecstasy</i> in accounts of others as they attempted to curry The Outsider’s favor, or curried what they already had. They felt the same joy as he did at the shrines, and with the runes and bonecharms.</p><p>This feeling was what came of being a true devotee. Piety, piety, innocent piety, his faith’s own gift to its bearer.</p><p>Pre-ejaculate dripped down his fingers like leaves off a tree as he stroked himself, quick and hard, as his mind tried to retain the feeling of the dream. Excepting his cock, his whole body began to grow fuzzy and numb, imitating the way that sacred space made him feel.</p><p>Heat coiled almost distantly in his balls, in the lower of his belly. The atmosphere kneeling at his shrine, sea salt in his nose. The Outsider’s nails under his lips and his palm on his cheek, demanding attention from every pore of his body with just a look.</p><p>He came with his eyes squeezed close, with an aloof sort of pleasure running through him, as aloof as the face he sees in his best dreams. His whole body rippled and shuddered in time to the spurts that left his come-slit with such force he could almost feel the little hole spread open for them. Innocent, basically, essentially innocent, reaping the gift of his faith.</p><p>He did not and does not love The Outsider, or feel any manner of lust for him. He’s not Granny Rags, trying to wed himself to him (and he did not dispose of her because her delusions made him jealous---he didn’t need another Marked around his collection, that’s all). It was <i>ecstasy</i>, religious fervor.</p><p>For a while he felt uneasy as he busied himself with neatening back up, and readying himself for the day. If The Outsider could stand Granny Rags he doubts what he did would offend him. Not when it wasn’t even directed directly at him.</p><p>He tends to his shrine with loving care one more time. He can’t bring his whole collection with him. The least he can do is keep these here as a monument, for however long until he can return. Perhaps he can make such a grand shrine as this in every kingdom he brings to the ground.</p><p>O, sweet purpose. He leaves on the rooftops with a mind full and sweetly foggy. Tyvia. Serkonos. There’ll be new blood for him wherever he ends up. And new scenery to fully express the potential so valued in him.</p><p>
  <i>Don’t take your eyes off me.</i>
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